


Ace of Clover

by Hattingmad



Category: Heart no Kuni no Alice | Alice in the Country of Hearts
Genre: F/M, M/M, implied impending threesome yo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 11:09:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1426309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hattingmad/pseuds/Hattingmad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel of sorts to Ace of Hearts.</p><p>Alice hates those talking doors, has THEORIES about Ace, and desperately misses Julius.</p><p>It turns out she isn't the only one, and that maybe the warped love of a clockwork knight is just what she's been missing.</p><p>Mad spoilers for... all the Alice games, pretty much, with regard to Ace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ace of Clover

“Alice.”

“Open us.”

“Open me.”

“Open the door.”

“The door will take you where you want to go.”

“Open the door.”

“Alice.”

* * *

 

Ever since the move to the Country of Clover, I’ve been miserable. Julius isn’t here, and it rends my heart.  I know everyone in Clover is trying to convince me this is normal and that I shouldn’t worry, but things don’t work like that in my world.  

In my world…if you lose someone, you may never find them again.

And… I don’t think I’m the only one who’s worried. Or who misses Julius like a phantom limb.

Ace has been different, lately.

I’d almost say he’s pining, but Ace has always seemed too strong for that.  He’s the only person in Wonderland who’s fighting against his ordained “role”, and Julius helped him do that… so maybe he misses his freedom?

But I don’t think that’s it. Julius was his friend, his _best_ friend, and without him Ace seems… lost.  He’s gone for up to sixty time periods, and when he comes “back”, he’s soaked in blood.  He picks fights for no reason, and his cheerful façade seems more forced and brittle than ever. It’s almost like Ace is _also_ afraid that Julius won’t ever come back.

But how could he be? Unless he was an Outsider like me once, his warped view of the world should be the same as everyone else here.  And yet—

I’m afraid of him since Julius went, and that’s the honest truth.

I try to avoid him, even though I’m just as lost as he is.  Maybe more so. I find myself crying all the time when I think about Julius.  I miss him so much. But while I drown myself in rivers of tears, Ace drowns himself in rivers of blood.  And somehow, every time I try to avoid him, I end up here instead.  At this damn forest of doors.

I’ve managed to cover my ears and turn around, so far, but I’m beginning to wonder why I should bother.

What if the doors take me to Julius?

What if the doors take me back home?

Wherever they go, they have to be better than here. I’m tired of fighting.

I reach out my hand and twist the knob—

“ **ALICE**! Don’t touch that!”

A humungous broadsword slices right through the top of the door I’m touching, hilt quivering inches from my face.  Stunned, I spin around, only to find Ace bodily trapping me against the splintered wood.

“It’s dangerous to play with doors, Alice,” he chides, trying for lighthearted cheer and missing by a mile.  I can see the strain on his face as he tries to keep the mask intact.

“Don’t,” I say, reaching out a hand to shove at his chest.  I can feel tears welling up in my eyes and I hate myself for it, for showing weakness to the one person who will always take advantage.

“Do you hear the doors, too, Alice?  I bet you do.  Ah, that’s the you I love, Alice,” Ace purrs, and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

“You’re pathetic, miserable, confused, _lost_ -”  and here he leans in and _licks_ the tears streaking down my cheeks, and I freeze in place at the sheer audacity of him.

“You’re just like me. But that’s why you can’t leave, you see,” he continues, licking around the shell of my ear.  “You have to stay lost with me. You’ve been avoiding me. Do I scare you?”  He bites down on my earlobe and I push at him with both hands as the sudden shock wakes me from my stupor.

“Stop it, Ace!”  I scream.  “Let me go!”

“Why?  So you can go through a door?  So you can leave me?  Where are you going, Alice?”  He taunts me, stepping back, then seizing both my hands as I try to run past him.

“To see Julius!”  I finally shout.  “I want to see Julius!”  I look him straight in the eyes as I assert, “and I know you feel the same way.”

He starts to laugh.

“Do you have a death wish, Alice?  Trying to provoke me like that?”

“Don’t bother pretending.  I know you miss him.  I know you’re worried about him, and I know you aren’t sure you’ll get to see him again.  Just like me.  So if I’m lost… you’ve been lost far longer than I have, haven’t you, Ace?”

“And what gives you that idea?”

“Because… because things _bother_ you.  This world bothers you.”

“Really, Alice?  How quaint.  Do you know the mountains of corpses I’ve created?  All the faceless I’ve slaughtered?  Do you think that _bothers_ me?”

I wrench my hand free and slap him, hard, across the face.  He stares at me, stunned into silence.

“Do you know what I think?  I think you’re a coward, running from your feelings.  And do you know what else?  I think you were an Outsider, once.  Just like me.”

Hell, if I’m signing my own death warrant, might as well go all the way with it.

And Ace does something amazing, then.  He throws his head back to the sky and howls with laughter.  He laughs, and laughs, and laughs until I think something has broken inside of him.  He laughs until he cries.

“You stupid little girl,” he says, but there’s no malice in it.  “You’ve heard my clock yourself.  So there goes that theory, huh?”

“I didn’t say you still _were_ one, obviously,” I huff, but I’m unsure of myself, now.  I thought it made so much sense.

“And what if I told you that you were right, huh, Alice?”  Ace asks, in a sing-song voice.  “What if I said there was a miserable, pathetic little kid who met a guy named Julius who took him down a hole to a better world?  What if that guy raised him like a father, only better?  And what if one day, that guy died, because the kid was too weak to save him?  What then?”

Ace retrieves his broadsword from the now-silent door with an audible heave and sheathes it.

“What if I told you that the kid made a deal with the devil to save the person most precious to him, to make sure he could never die, never go away, not in this world, not completely?  What if the kid condemned this guy Julius, this person he loved, to a horrible fate where everyone would hate him, because the kid was that selfish, and that determined not to lose him?  What if the kid became a monster in exchange for that person’s life?  What would you say to that?  You’d say he was disgusting and still pathetic, right?  You, who can’t stand death and murder, you’d hate that guy with all your heart, right, Alice?”

_And then that guy he fought so hard to keep with him suddenly disappears one day due to the whims of this world, and he can’t do anything about it. Anything at all._

“I’d say he had something he had to protect,” I tell him without hesitation.  “And that he’s braver than me, and stronger.  Honestly?  I despise myself.  I’m weak, and indecisive, and I don’t deserve to be loved.  I can’t fight like that to protect someone.  I’d say that guy… that guy isn’t lost at all, not really.  And that I’m jealous.”

Ace cocks his head at me curiously.  “Jealous?  Of that prick?  Why?”

“Because, as warped and twisted as it is… that guy really, really loved his friend and… I wish…” No, it’s too disgusting.  I can’t finish that sentence, even if I wanted to.  And I really don’t want to.

“You wish someone loved you that much?  Enough to ruin you, to break you completely and utterly, beyond repair, for their own selfishness, just because they couldn’t live in a world without you in it?  Boy, Alice, I had no idea you were so ****** up!  And such a romantic!”  Ace is grinning now like he’s just hit on a delicious secret.

“Shut your mouth, Ace, that’s repulsive,” I snap at him.  But I can feel my face heating up, betraying my cold words.  

As awful as he makes it sound… even still… and this, _this_ is why I truly don’t deserve to be loved.

Disgusting. I’m disgusting. I wish a knight on his white horse would come trample me and put me out of my misery in this awful, sugary dream world.  But this knight, here?  He’s doing no such thing.  A shame.

“Oh, Alice, Alice, don’t you know?  That’s the only way I know _how_ to love.  Do you want that, Alice?  Do you?  From someone as awful as me?” I cannot speak, cannot move, can barely even breathe.  I hate him so much.  Surely, that must be it.

“Good news, Alice.  Hey, Julius isn’t here right now, and I’m at loose ends without an idée fixe… I could love you like that, you know, Alice?  I could break you.”  He says it so calmly, like it’s the most normal thing in the world, what he’s proposing.

I’m sick, so sick, for even considering for a moment…

“What, so I’m just a stand-in for Julius until he comes back?”  I sabotage myself, I have to, because I can’t have this.  This isn’t for me.

“When did I ever say that?  Julius is a boy, you’re a girl.  It’s different.  Why can’t I have you both?  I think he likes you, you know.  I was jealous about that, at first.  I wanted to kill you.  But then I thought… this could work.  You could stay, and it could be the three of us, and maybe he’d finally… well.  You know how he is.”

I can’t help the sharp bark of laughter that escapes out of my throat, because I _do_ know Julius, and I see what Ace is saying, and even though it’s wrong, it’s so wrong, I can’t help but picture it in my head.  I can’t help but long for what I see.  Two people to love, and to love me, even though I don’t deserve it, not a bit of it… but Ace makes it sound like I could earn it, somehow, if agreeing to be ruined is all I have to do to finally, finally---

Ace has caged me in again, somehow, and he’s whispering in my ear as his hands roam my body, as gentle as his words are harsh.

“You see it my way, don’t you, Alice?  I knew it.  I knew you were just like me.  Do you hear the doors, Alice?  Do you hear how they’ve changed? Listen to the sick cry of your pathetic heart.  Listen to mine.  Isn’t it awful?”

And I open my ears, and I can hear the forest now, and the doors have changed their tune.

“Open us, Alice.”

“Open me, Ace.”

“I’ll take you to Julius.”

“Open me, and be happy.”

“Open the door. The clockmaker is waiting.”

“Open the door! Alice! Ace! Come find Julius!”

“Julius… I go to Julius…”

“Open the door…”

“It’s sickening,” I say, and grip Ace’s coat tightly.  “The worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

He smiles at me, and for an instant, I see an open, happy, honest look on his face.  Maybe even relief mixed in there somewhere.  He must be able to tell that I can’t reject him, won’t abandon him, and despite my words to the contrary, want what he’s offering.

I swallow.

“Shall we?” He grips my hand, and together, we open a door, and step through.

**Author's Note:**

> I could definitely leave this as a one-shot... or I could expand it and play with what happens when they reach Julius. I honestly haven't decided, so I'm open to suggestions.


End file.
